


Family Ghosts

by avocadomoon



Category: Charmed (TV 1998)
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:55:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23465044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avocadomoon/pseuds/avocadomoon
Summary: The mistake of motherhood is thinking that your daughter will benefit from your experience, because you assume that she'll have the same ones, which seems so simple in retrospect! So obvious. Death has a way of turning the light on in the rooms you never paid much attention to before.
Relationships: Victor Bennett/Patricia Halliwell
Comments: 3
Kudos: 25
Collections: Wayback Exchange 2020





	Family Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flipflop_diva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/gifts).



Victor's new apartment in San Jose has a balcony, which makes it much easier for Patty, on just a practical level. Manifesting inside of brick-walled structures always seems to be a little bit trickier, for whatever reason. Patty tries to remember her old Magic School classes, that grouchy old witch that taught Magical Properties and Rituals, but it's all just a big fat blank, now. When you're dead, you tend to cut back on the space in your memories out of necessity. You only need the things you need. 

"Well hey there, Grandma," Victor says, catching sight of her through the double doors. Chris is hanging from one arm, one fist in his mouth, and Wyatt is clutching his leg, an expensive fountain pen that Patty recognizes from Victor's desk clutched in his free hand. "Guys, look, it's your grandma! Whoa, Wyatt, don't put that in your mouth, bud, that's not good for you - "

"Need some help?" Patty says, closing her eyes briefly to concentrate. In the space between one second and the next, she can feel the blood rushing back into her head, the weighty sensation of actual flesh tugging her down, anchoring her feet to the patio. When she opens her eyes, her hands are solid enough to push open the door. "Wyatt, honey, give me that. Victor, I thought I told you to keep your office locked when the boys were over!"

"He likes to draw," Victor says with a shrug. He grins at her faintly as she swings Wyatt into her arms, watching with warm eyes as she hugs her grandson close. "You haven't been by in awhile."

"Busy," Patty says, kissing Wyatt's face three times, in quick succession. The Halliwell lucky number. Wyatt, the quietest toddler Patty's ever met, accepts them with good grace and then proceeds to stick her necklace in his mouth instead. "There was a, ah, situation on the ninth plane. Long story."

"Don't wanna know," he says quickly, leaning in with the baby so that Patty can kiss Chris too. He's not nearly as calm or quiet as Wyatt is; he squawks loudly, and flails his little fist out in self-defense. Patty ducks her head away quickly before he can make contact. "Well, you look fine. Healthy and all, considering." He shrugs his head instead of his shoulders so he doesn't dislodge the baby, a motion that reminds Patty viscerally of the early days, after Prue was born. Before Piper. They'd just been a normal family, then - a husband and wife, newlyweds really, with a newborn. No magic, no nothing, except their cramped little condo, their sedan, and the future laid out in front of them, new and clean, full of possibilities. "I'm fine too, thanks for asking."

Patty reaches up with a smile, laying her palm against his aging cheek fondly. She knows he feels self-conscious, more and more now that he's getting older and she isn't. His hair is growing white, the wrinkles change the shape of his face. He looks more and more like his father every day. "Well, you look fine," she parrots, grinning at him. "Healthy and all, considering."

Victor rolls his eyes. "Come on. I'm ordering out for dinner."

"Dinner!" Wyatt says suddenly, his head popping up off of Patty's shoulder in interest. Patty and Victor both laugh in unison. 

"Wyatt likes orange chicken," Victor informs Patty solemnly, as if that isn't the only thing he ever eats at Grandpa's house. "Chris is skeptical. Thought we'd try a couple different things, see what sticks."

"Sounds great," Patty says honestly, skipping a little to keep up with Victor's long, long legs, staying shoulder to shoulder with him through the corridor down to the kitchen. "You know what sounds good to me? Egg rolls. God, I haven't had egg rolls since before I died."

Victor flinches a little, as he always does when she says such things, but it doesn't show in his voice. "I know a great place," he says. "Free delivery if you buy more than thirty bucks."

"I think the four of us can make it there," Patty says with a smile. 

Victor was charming as a young man, because of course he was - that was his greatest flaw, in Penny Halliwell's eyes. The second he rolled up to the Manor with a smile and a kiss for her hand, smooth-tongued and well-dressed, it was already over. He never really had a chance. 

They met in a library, looking for the same book, in Patty's second year of university and Victor's fourth. That was charming too; it was a great story at parties, Patty always told it in such a way that she could get anyone laughing, even the stuffiest people from Victor's office, the buttoned-up executives who looked down on her peasant blouses and Birkenstock sandals. _We were looking for the same exact book,_ Patty would say, _would you believe the university only had one copy of The Metaphysics of the Healing? That's Avicenna, you know. He was a medical doctor as well as a philosopher - talk about double duty! Anyway, it had been mishelved, and I spent almost twenty minutes scouring the stacks and trying to make eye contact with this cute boy before I realized he was looking in all the same places I was! We joined forces eventually - he was trying to make eye contact too! - and it took us_ another _twenty minutes to realize that we were after the same text! He let me check it out first, by the way. What a gentleman._

Victor, in the early days, when he would stay glued at her side at these parties, would chime in with something like, _I got a date out of it, though, so who was the winner, really?_ Or _I had to stay up all night to finish my term paper, once I finally got it, but man, was it worth it._ Later, of course, Victor would peel away from her the second they hit the doors, and so Patty would have to tell this story by herself. And later even still - Patty didn't go to the parties at all. 

Now that she's dead, Patty has been gifted with some perspective. She can see herself as a young woman: her mother's stubborn pride, the weight of her family's legacy, and the burning knowledge deep in her gut of her own destiny, the sinking feeling of certainty that gripped her heart every time she looked upon her daughter's face. Even before Piper and Phoebe, Patty had known. Before Prue, even - the dreams, when she was young, had never faded from her memory. Patty wasn't psychic, and for years she was able to convince herself that it was a product of her mother's doomsdaying, but really...she'd known. Of course she'd known. 

It had been easy to let her mother convince her that it was all his fault. _The mortal blood will make them weak._ Such bullshit, really. Easy to ignore how hard he'd tried in the beginning to understand, sitting up late with the Book of Shadows, swallowing back his fear. They never fought before he knew about the magic - their marriage was a wonderful dream, before that. Picnics in the park on weekends, candlelit dinners, long talks into the night. Victor had been the one to name Prue. He'd liked the 'P' tradition; he'd thought it was a wonderful way to honor her family. _Not like I have a family to honor,_ he'd said ruefully. It breaks Patty's heart now, to remember how badly he'd wanted Penny to like him. How, in the beginning, he'd gotten excited at the idea of family reunions, and weekly dinners. Oh, how they'd let him down. They'd disappointed him over and over, and then blamed him for it. What a tragedy, Patty thought. 

They'd been young, to be fair, they were so young. Patty was only twenty-eight when she died; she's lived longer now as a spirit and part time metaphysical presence with humanlike properties (the closest description she's been able to come up with that doesn't sacrifice accuracy, even if it is a mouthful) than she ever did as a living human. Victor had been young too; Penny never gave him any grace for that. He was thirty when she died, and only twenty-eight himself, when he found out about Patty and Sam. She still remembers the look on his face, the absolute devastation. The disbelief, the way he'd tried to give her a chance to lie to him about it, before she told him she was pregnant. The bone-deep anger that she could feel in her own body, the betrayal so profound that Patty herself felt sick for days afterward, as if she'd stabbed herself in the back too, on her way back from stabbing him. 

Would they have divorced, if it hadn't been for Paige? No. Probably not. Patty loved Sam, but not in the way she loved her husband. She loved him because he loved her, and that wasn't a very good reason to love somebody. They hadn't even known each other that well, to be honest - adrenaline and attraction and that was it. When Patty had walked him into the afterlife, taken his mortal hand to ease his way through to the other side, she'd felt it - the corners and angles where they wouldn't have fit. Sam could feel it too, she could tell. No wonder he'd gone back to the Whitelighters so quickly. 

When she was growing up, her mother had talked about her magic like it was a gift, a special blessing from the Goddess that made them special, set them apart from other people. She'd had an extraordinary life, she'd told Patty, and it was all because of her magic. Husbands were fickle, and friends were fairweather more often than not. But your craft never left you, and neither did your destiny. 

Patty is not Penny, and Penny is not Patty. And neither of them are Piper, or Prue, or Phoebe, or Paige. The mistake of motherhood is thinking that your daughter will benefit from your experience, because you assume that she'll have the same ones, which seems so simple in retrospect! So obvious. Death has a way of turning the light on in the rooms you never paid much attention to before. If Patty could go back - and oh, she's tried, how many times she's tried, especially after Prue - she would smack her younger self in the head and tell her to stop returning her mother's calls, look up from her spellbooks, keep her eyes in the present. Oh, what she'd thrown away. Oh, how it all could've been so different. 

In another lifetime, Patty never grew resentful of her husband's fear, never assumed that it was _her_ he was scared of, never let her mother harden her heart against him. They raised their girls together, and set them loose upon the world with balanced hearts, Halliwell passion tempered by Victor's pragmatism and wry, warm humor. Maybe in that world, Patty would've brought backup with her to fight the water demon. Or maybe she didn't - maybe some things are set in stone. But they would've had more time, perhaps. 

Not that they're still much luckier than most - not that they don't have lots of extra time now. But still, Patty regrets. It's the nature of being a ghost. 

Sometimes she can appear when he's alone, which is nice. Victor stopped smoking, at the request of the alternate timeline version of their grandson - now _that_ was quite the story, Patty regrets that she'd been tied up in Whitelighter matters at the time - so he sits on his balcony and eats flavored walnuts or trail mix, on the nights that he would've usually smoked a cigar. He'll share them with Patty, and they'll sit there in comfortable silence, as Victor does paperwork and Patty reads. He keeps her favorites on his bookshelf for her again, and his favorites get shoved towards the back - like their shelves had been when they were married. 

She's not sure, exactly, what the rules are. She doesn't always hear the girls' calls, for instance, which usually means that whatever problem they're dealing with isn't serious enough to warrant her presence. Either that, or it's something they need to deal with themselves. But she always hears Victor's - she'd taught him the incantation, given him a simplified list of ingredients. He's not magical - not a single drop of it in his blood - and yet, she always hears him. How does _that_ make sense?

She sits with him too, sometimes when he can't see her. For two years after Prue's death, she'd sat next to him on the couch, silent and invisible, watching him stare into the middle distance, drinking himself to sleep, flipping through old photo albums with shaky, wrinkled hands. She'd cried with him, and sometimes she'd thought it was helping, a little. He slept a little easier when she was there - or maybe that was wishful thinking. 

"She's good?" he says sometimes, and Patty always knows who he means. She can't tell him anything about that either - and she's _tried,_ but the words don't come out, something keeps her throat closed even as she fights to open it - but she can nod, or touch his shoulder, and she's pretty sure he gets it. A certain tilt of her head means, _she would visit if she could, and she so desperately wishes she could, but it's not time yet,_ a particular slow blink says, _she loves you, she forgives you, she misses you._ Maybe if Patty is allowed to stay long enough, she'll learn how to communicate the rest of it. But maybe he knows that Prue always had a much bigger destiny than all of them - he could be uncannily perceptive, sometimes. Patty always used to feel guilty for being surprised. 

He's a wonderful grandpa for the same reasons that he would've been a wonderful father, if he'd been given a fair chance; he's attentive and caring, he knows their likes and dislikes, he listens to them and treats them like people, instead of loud dolls, or accessories, or annoyances. Patty can watch sometimes, in the way of watching when she doesn't have to actually be there, the nights when Piper and Leo come to visit and they all have dinner - a fragrant dining room, laughter bouncing off the walls, heart-full smiles across the table. Phoebe's working on her first little one, and she visits...less, but she still visits. Paige doesn't visit at all, but Victor understands, and his feelings are hardly hurt. She's always funny and nice when he stops by the Manor, after all. 

Patty wishes, sometimes, that he'd find someone. A woman to spend his time with, to enjoy the last of his years. She'd stop visiting so much, if that happened, but the one time she'd brought it up, he'd reacted so angrily and indignantly that she'd almost gone see-through again, she was so surprised. 

"The last time I tried that she turned out to be a demon who stabbed me and tried to steal Wyatt right out of Piper's womb," Victor tells her one night, when they're both calm. It's been a pleasant day, Chris had been there for a while, and Patty got to see Phoebe for a minute when she came to pick him up. Phoebe couldn't see her, of course - not many can see Patty, these days, other than Victor - but it was still really nice. "Forgive me if I'm not chomping at the bit to try again."

"You should talk to the girls about it," Patty suggests. "Myself, I never really, you know, _dated._ Other than you and, uh - "

"Yeah," Victor says with a grimace, before she can say the name. Still a sore subject. "Got it."

"Anyway, they probably have more advice for you than me," Patty continues, stubbornly. "Piper accidentally dated a warlock once, I think? And she didn't know who he was, right? And then, our little Phoebe, of course - "

"She doesn't like to talk about that," Victor says with a frown. "I don't blame her. And it's a touchy subject with Piper, considering what happened with Doris. Anyway, they don't have time for their old, sad sack dad. It's fine. I'm fine, Pats! Really. I read, I babysit, I golf, I go to estate sales - "

Patty snorts. "Like you need any _more_ of this old, antique crap."

"That's rich, coming from the lady who once convinced me to spend eight hundred dollars on a colonial-era sewing machine."

"It was cool!" Patty cries, smacking his arm. Victor laughs. "Oh, I loved going to those sales with you, even if it was boring. Because Prue had so much fun, remember?"

"She loved it more than both of us," Victor says fondly, pulling his legs up to rest his feet against the seat of the empty patio chair next to Patty's. She looks down at his old man loafers and smiles, her heart fond and full of life, beating temporarily in her solid-for-the-time-being chest. "I was thinking, ah. I've got some money set aside - you know I started accounts for all the girls - "

"Even Paige, yes I know," Patty says, with another impossibly fond smile. "You big softie."

"Well, it's not _her_ fault," Victor says, looking a little flustered. He avoids her eyes. "Well - I still have Prue's. Since it's been just, you know, sitting there for all this time - there's a good chunk of money in it. I thought about splitting it up, maybe dividing it equally between Chris and Wyatt's - maybe adding it onto the one I started for Phoebe's daughter, but - I don't know - "

"What?" Patty asks, reaching out with her hand to touch his elbow softly. Like he always does, when she touches him, Victor looks like he might pass out at the contact, his face contracting like he's in pain, his entire body seizing up tight like if he makes any sudden movement, she'll disappear again. "What are you thinking?"

"I - " he swallows. "A charity? I could start a 501(c)(3), it's pretty easy. I've got a guy…" he clears his throat, trailing off momentarily. Patty retrieves her hand, out of sympathy, and he instantly looks more stable. "I don't know what she would want to put the money towards, is my problem. I thought something to do with antiques - historical preservation - but I don't know that there was any specific building or place that she was particularly interested in, and Prue was so...practical, it just doesn't feel right."

Patty hums. "That's a wonderful idea, honey," she says, the old endearment slipping out accidentally. Victor's eyes flash, and he ducks his chin against his chest. Patty feels sharp and tender at the sight, like a wound that's been rubbed raw by its bandage. "She would want to help people, in some way. Real people, who need it, right now. That's what she would say if she were here."

Victor nods in silent agreement. "Homelessness," he says. "She told me once about a woman who used to work for her at Buckland's. She was a single mom; she got fired after Prue stopped working there, and Prue helped her keep her house. Used to send her money every once in a while, when she could. When she lost that magazine job, she asked me for money - not for herself, but for her friend."

"There are so many who could use that kind of help. Even more today, than back then."

Victor nods. His eyes are bright, full of tears, making them shine in the low light from the porch lamp. "I'm not gonna tell the girls."

"You shouldn't." Patty huffs a laugh. "They'd get offended for no good reason."

"They get that from you, you know. The contrariness. They just wanna fight sometimes, they're like puppies."

"Oh, and you were always so docile," Patty shoots back with a laugh. "Face it, Victor, your shark genes helped too."

"I'm not a shark," Victor says, offended. "I'm actually a huge pushover at work. You should see me. The other guys make fun of me."

"Uh huh, sure," Patty says, still laughing. It feels different now than it had when she was alive; it's a lot easier. Freer. She can laugh without feeling self-conscious, without thinking of her crooked tooth, how too much of her gums show when she smiles. The shrill sound of it used to embarrass her, but now - it's like none of it matters. "I think it's a good idea. Prue would approve."

"Yeah." Victor clears his throat, and his hand twitches. Patty can tell that he wishes he had a cigar. "Might as well do something useful with the money, after all. There's enough now that I can keep growing the fund. Maybe set something up for donations."

"It'll keep you busy." Patty purses her lips playfully, raising her eyebrow. "You know. In your old age."

"Buzz off," Victor says. "Not all of us can be eternally in their late twenties."

"Oh!" Patty sets down her teacup. He always buys the green tea she likes, keeps it around for her visits. She wonders if the girls have noticed that, or the books. They probably haven't. "I want to show you something. I've been working on it."

"Sounds fun," Victor says, in a very familiar tone of voice that makes Patty's cheeks flush. "Good thing I'm already sitting down."

"Hush," she says, and he laughs again. "Close your eyes."

"What? No way."

"Come on, _Victor,_ it's nothing bad. I just can't concentrate when you're looking at me."

Victor gives her a _look,_ but closes his eyes anyway. Always has to put on a show before he goes ahead and does what she wants anyway; Patty loves him for it even more now than she had when she was alive. 

It gets easier every time she does it, but Patty still has to work hard to get there; she focuses on her hands, laying flat on his patio table, and watches as they go from youthful and smooth to wrinkled, pitted with age, darkly freckled and weathered with calluses. Her not-really-quite-there bones feel suddenly much heavier, an ache appears in her sort-of-real back. She lifts her palms to her cheeks and smooths her hair back, which is now a light grey. If she had a mirror, she could see her own face looking much more like her mother's - thinner and bony, elegant in old age, but still worn down by time. 

"Alright," she says. "Look at me, Victor."

He does. In an instant, he looks suddenly young again - the sweater with the collared shirt beneath it, Doc Martens, his floppy brown hair that she used to love to run her fingers through. In a short moment he is twenty-one and twenty-eight and thirty and forty-five and sixty-two all at once, every stage of his life suddenly converged upon the same thirty seconds, he is a college student, he's a newlywed, he's bitterly divorced and barred from seeing his children, he's burying his daughter, he's holding his grandson in his arms for the first time. Patty looks upon him and sees the entire arc of his life, his failures and his regrets, his triumphs and the infinite span of his love and care, which has never wavered even when he hated her. The love makes the anger worse, and she's always known this. In this moment, though, it hardly matters. 

"Pats," he says, his voice breaking. He raises one shaky hand, reaching out towards her, and the tears spill over silently, dropping down the side of his face beneath his spectacles. "Oh my God, _Patty._ You look so beautiful."

"Not too wrinkly?" she asks, a little shaky herself. She reaches out with her hand and meets his in the middle, pressing their palms together. Two golden oldies, with a lifetime's worth of mistakes, between the two of them. Looking at the whole of it, though, Patty can see how it brought them somewhere good regardless. "Don't get too used to it. It takes a lot of energy. And it's probably not exactly how I would've looked - I'm just guessing."

"You look _beautiful,_ " Victor says again, squeezing her hand. He wipes at his face, unashamed. "Just how I imagined you."

"You imagined me?" Patty laughs at his eye roll. "Maybe that's why I can do it."

"Nah. I'm just a stupid mortal, remember?" What would've been bitter, not even all that long ago, now sounds gentle. Just a little inside joke. "Man, Pat. Oh man. You look like Audrey Hepburn."

Patty snorts, wiping her own face. "Shut up."

"You do!"

"I thought it was Katharine that I looked like."

"I did used to say that, didn't I? I was probably just trying to get in your pants."

Patty tilts her head back and laughs. The sound itself feels cleansing. "I knew. I was letting you."

Victor grins at her, bringing her hand up to his mouth for a kiss. His beard is grey and scratchy; there's a sharp pain in his wrist - the onset of arthritis - that Patty can feel through the contact between their hands. A heart murmur deep in his chest, that she's keeping an ear on. He's going to get cancer in a few years as well - but it'll be in his skin, this time, not his lungs, thanks to Chris. Much more manageable. Patty's got a plan for that, too. "Thanks. Thank you. You look amazing. Really, Pats. This is - " he breaks off again, overwhelmed. 

"You're welcome, honey," Patty says, leaning back in her chair. Letting the wind rise up from the city, brushing her bangs back against her forehead. Being alive again - even for a little bit - that's the real gift. Time that should never be wasted. "You know me. I would never want you to feel _inadequate._ "

He snorts, loud enough to startle her. "Love you too, babe."

"You better," Patty says.


End file.
